Driver: San Francisco Review (360)

A lot of the year I seem to be in San Francisco. I love it there. So when Driver: San Francisco came around Debbie passed it my way for reviewing. The story starts with you playing John Tanner, star of the complete Driver series with your faithful partner Tobias Jones at your side, still chasing Charles Jericho through various parts of the city.

San Francisco

When I first got the game I had to compare the maps in-game against the real world of San Francisco. Now, of course it would be unrealistic to expect Ubisoft to have mapped the whole of San Francisco, even more so to expect a modern console to handle that size of a map. So instead we have a simplified version retaining most of the impressive landmarks as well as the main landscape headlines like Marin and Oakland. Needless to say, I spent quite a long time racing around doing things like seeing how fast I could really power slide down Lombard Street without wrecking the car.

Crashing cars

The game does have some pretty nail biting moments where I was praying that I’d make it in the time allocated. At one stage my heart rate was at god knows how many BPM having just torn through central San Francisco trying to deliver a mysterious person to a specific location only to get ambushed on the way. It was fantastically satisfying hitting over 150mph into oncoming traffic while trying to lose the police, and then straight down as I slammed into a wall just before the end. You really cannot just hold the accelerator and expect to make it. You have to route plan, drive like crazy and have a bit of luck.

I’ll be honest here, racing is fun, but my favourite missions involved getting to crash vehicles at high speeds. It really works, taking heavy vehicles from on traffic and slamming them into a car without worrying about a timer (mostly). These and the other stunt missions like sideward drifting trying to destroy signs for a gig were probably my favourites in the game.

The mad bomber side missions are fun but frustrating at the same times. You’ll have trucks driving down the street with bombs underneath them. Your job is to slide under and hold the car in position for a time to defuse it. The amount of times the car was too high or too small to pull it off had me swearing. This one quest took me quite a few times and was almost enough for me to quit. Shortly after this a police chase in action went past me so I thought “Hey, what happens if I shift into one of those?”. Next thing I knew I’d triggered a mission where I had to take down the car I had seen fly past me. It might be a small feature, but I feel that it’s pretty cool and I still jump into them if I see them flying past.

During the game it seemed when the AI was driving the bad guys they had were seriously aggressive and could drive like Michael Schumacher on a kamikaze run. Then when I needed them to drive a car, the AI screwed it up, drove slowly or just plain crashed it. Nit-picking maybe, I did eventually get past these problems but at the time I hated it.

Top Gear

I really liked the sheer variety of cars available, over 100 are available for you to purchase. These are not random artificial cars; these are video game interpretations of the real world versions. Now, I’ve not driven an AMC Pacer, so I can’t comment for the actual feel of most of the cars in game vs real life, but based on the statistics the game gives them they do perform like you would expect.

You’ll also really need to get the hang of drifting, as the game is very keen to fishtail the car with the slightest provocation. Normally this was on a corner for me and straight into a brick wall (although it’s also possible that my driving is terrible!). The moral of this story, tap the accelerator in corners, don’t just hold it!

Insert Cut Scene

Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that the cut scenes used to detail the story are pretty good. but what I found very impressive was the faces of the characters involved. The detail and animation of the characters was very good. I’ve only seen the like on a few titles. This set a high standard for the in game graphics which, in general, were above average. The cars really did look like their real-world counterparts. For most of the game there was little to no drop out on the frame rate, but once I had 10+ police cars chasing me, the game started to stutter when flying over intersections at speeds in excess of 100mph.

Racing Others

Multi-player, normally the bane of my life, turned out to be enjoyable even though I lost pretty badly. The game features a large selection of online modes which do feature somewhere in the main game helping get you ready for competing online. The one I struggled with the most was trailblazer. Basically you have to remain behind a computer driven car, gathering points for being in its trail. This leads to a lot of shifting, and jostling between the players which I found a lot harder than just crashing into things.

The game also features local multi-player through split-screen display. You can race in co-op mode, featuring three specific races, or again you can do competitive mode featuring a selection similar to the online version.

In Summary

Driver: San Francisco a great addition to the Driver series. The story line is a little crazy, but presented very well, clearly meant to be light-hearted by taking hints from mainstream films and TV shows.

If you are a fan of driving games, I would definitely recommend getting Driver: San Francisco at retail price. Casual players will also enjoy it as the difficult is not unreasonable. You don’t need to be a racing pro to finish it. The game has plenty of content, and with multi-player it leads to a great replay value. There’s also the Film Director mode which I’ve yet to use, allowing you to create your own chase movies and upload them on the internet to share. I’m sure this will lead to many a funny moment on Facebook.

I’ve a hard time thinking of anything really negative about the game. Yes I swore at it, yes it had me sitting at the edge of my seat and if you’d asked me this during some of the missions I would have a very different answer. All in all, Driver San Francisco is a very slick and enjoyable gaming experience.

Driver: San Francisco is out now on PS3 and Xbox 360 for around £35.